Maybe it’s the fashion or the facial hair, but Hollywood’s got it bad for the ‘70s right now. From the world of television (Showtime’s upcoming comedy series I’m Dying Up Here or HBO’s The Deuce) to film (Sofia Coppola’s remake of 1971’s The Beguiled), there’s a marked uptick in...

Early on in two recent horror films from debut directors — Get Out and Raw — we are treated to individual takes on what has been a trope of the genre for some time now: the out-of-nowhere, car-swerves-to-avoid-an-animal-in-the-road jump scare. The ubiquity of this scene has made it something of...

In case you missed it, the new Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer dropped recently, and it looks insane! As with any Marvel movie, the trailer is filled with Easter Eggs that I’m betting even hardcore Spidey fans may not have picked up on. Let’s take a deep dive and explore what the new trailer...

Welcome to Film Face-Off. Two films enter, one film leaves. Well, technically Jeff Bayer simply pits two movies together, makes up five categories, and then declares a winner. Sometimes there is a good reason for this, sometimes there is not. Most of the time there is a clear winner (in his...

One might look at 2017’s Beauty and the Beast and wonder what film history is in its DNA besides the obvious. On the surface, it’s merely a remake of Disney’s 1991 animated musical adaptation of the fairy tale, but the new Beauty and the Beast finds itself inspired by many films — including...

The rapidly growing self-cannibalization wing of Walt Disney Pictures has manufactured a new live-action version of Beauty and the Beast that courted controversy from the moment it was announced. First people were upset by the casting of normal human actors in roles previously intended for...

Jordan Peele’s horror-comedy Get Out is breaking new ground for its blunt, satirical take on the current state of race relations. But what many fail to notice amid the stark social commentary is Peele’s parallel presentation of disability alongside institutional racism.
Disabled characters...

Comics, like movies, are texts ripe for deconstruction. Animators and writers deliberately plot their stories for audience entertainment, while simultaneously commenting on the world around us. The power of the comic book is so strong that in 1954 a United States Senate Subcommittee convened to...

Logan, directed by James Mangold, is the third film in the Wolverine trilogy (if you can call it that), the tenth film in Fox’s X-Men series, and a departure from the other films in the X-franchise. Not just because it’s rated R, either. This one is very much a classic genre film, with...

Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea and Damian Chazelle’s La La Land, two Oscar contenders with more differences than similarities, use music in contrasting yet complementary ways. La La Land is a love letter to both the bygone era of movie musicals (shot in Cinemascope, for all you West...

Langston Hughes wrote, “What happens to a dream deferred / Does it dry up / Like a raisin in the sun / Or fester like a sore— / And then run?” The American dream came under fire last year by those who felt theirs had been deferred for too long. Hollywood was born on being the “dream...

Day 3: Saturday, Jan. 21
As you probably heard (unless Fox News is your only source of information), there were numerous large protest marches throughout the world today, as people took to the streets to register their dissatisfaction with the latest Underworld movie.
No, I kid, it was about...

Listen! Do you smell that? It's the Sundance Film Festival, back for another year of showcasing new independent films and terrorizing the helpless town of Park City, Utah.
The mood is slightly muted this year, partly because there wasn't much pre-festival buzz about any of the films, partly...

It’s a common problem. In fact, it happened to so many of you just last weekend. A quiet moment at a particularly raucous New Year’s Eve party created the perfect occasion for that familiar conversation.
Your best friend rhetorically jabs:
“So we’re all in agreement that Rise of the...